Toy marks fifty years of window into ant life

This year marks a half-century since Levine began selling his Uncle Milton Ant Farm — the sand-filled, clear plastic boxes through which ant voyeurs can watch the insects tunnel and eat, and later die. Levine said more than 20 million of his Ant Farms have been sold, with more than a billion ants shipped to customers eager to bring their toys to life."Never in my wildest dreams had I thought it would last 50 years," said Levine, who retired 10 years ago and left his son, Steve, to run Uncle Milton Industries. Read the article

Be aware of the physical hazards of TV to little children

Heavy electronic equipment a mounting hazard for children WINNIPEG — Every year at least five Manitoba children are injured by tumbling TVs, speakers and stereos. A decade of hospital records obtained by the Winnipeg Free Press describe cuts, head injuries and amputations due to falling electronic equipment, especially TVs resting on unstable furniture like bedroom dressers. Read the whole article

Books for your dolls house

A dolls house cannot be complete without books. Here are instructions on how to create them for your own dolls.

Practical Money Skills

PracticalMoneySkills.com is a free Web site designed to help educators, parents and students practice better money management for life. ……In addition to providing online tools and resources via www.practicalmoneyskills.com, Visa has created free classroom material that educators can use to teach personal finance. Available online or in a binder format, the classroom curriculum is free. It offers a teacher's guide, student worksheets and quizzes and interactive brain-teasers that can be played by students via the Web or from a CD-ROM. Additionally, Visa donates computer labs, ensuring that schools in need have access to the equipment needed to take advantage of Practical Money Skills for Life. Learn more about Visa's outreach program.

Aspects of communication

Are you interested in developing your communication skills? Do you love to write? Are you interested in reading? Visit my Pivotal Communication blog.

Steve Biddulph - Raising babies

“…a laypersons guide to the avalanche of recent research showing damaged social development in children who enter nursery "too much, too early, too long". It gives an easy to read and illuminating look into new brain research that shows what happens between parent and infant in a loving relationship, that is itself worthwhile for any parent to read.” Read more

What's the hurry?

Are well-meaning parents over-scheduling their children's activities with the possible effect of robbing young people of the joys of childhood?Education consultant and early childhood expert, Ms Kathy Walker, author of the new book, What's The Hurry? argues that parents who enrol their children in up to three, four or more extra curricula activities a week are contributing to the US-dubbed phenomena, the over-scheduled child - a trend that is rapidly growing in Australia. Read the whole article

New image search

Ask.com introduces its image search

Bill targets bullying over the internet

A new bill seeks to help public school administrators curb the newest form of bullying -- menacing Internet postings Article continues

Acronyms and abbreviations

AbbreviationZ.com “Launched on 2001, AbbreviationZ.com is the largest human-edited acronyms and abbreviations directory on the internet with more than 350,000 entries classified by over 120 different categories and sub-categories. The new innovative meta-search feature allows users, who are searching for acronyms and abbreviations definitions on the local AbbreviationZ.com directory, to locate additional meanings on the internet by using a meta-search engine, which is based on proprietary natural-language-processing algorithms, that lookup and parse multiple search-engines simultaneously.”

Acronys and abbreviations

AbbreviationZ.com http://abbreviationz.com/ “Launched on 2001, AbbreviationZ.com is the largest human-edited acronyms and abbreviations directory on the internet with more than 350,000 entries classified by over 120 different categories and sub-categories. The new innovative meta-search feature allows users, who are searching for acronyms and abbreviations definitions on the local AbbreviationZ.com directory, to locate additional meanings on the internet by using a meta-search engine, which is based on proprietary natural-language-processing algorithms, that lookup and parse multiple search-engines simultaneously.”

Marriage and child wellbeing

Marriage and Child Wellbeing Introducing the Issue Sara McLanahan, Elisabeth Donahue, and Ron Haskins Introduction Marriage has become a hot topic on the American domestic policy scene. The Bush administration is proposing to spend $1.5 billion over the next five years to increase “healthy” marriages.1 Gays and lesbians are demanding the right to marry.2 A few states are reconsidering no-fault divorce laws and experimenting with new types of “covenant marriage.”3 And legislators are scrutinizing tax and transfer policies for “marriage penalties.”4 These initiatives have been spurred by changes in marriage and childbearing during the latter part of the twentieth century and by mounting social science evidence that these changes are not in the best interests of children.

The Great Family Cookbook Project

The Great Family cookbook Project "We have developed this site to help families and individuals create and print personalized cookbooks easily and affordably.Family cookbooks are an important way to preserve our mealtime traditions for future generations. With the passing of our loved ones comes the loss of treasured food traditions. A family cookbook ensures that the recipes from one generation can be passed on to the next as a treasured family heirloom. Once the recipes are preserved online, they can be shared with other family members by email, individual printed recipes or your own professionally printed cookbook."

New interactive healthy eating calculator

Finding customized information about what and how much to feed your child is just a click away, thanks to the CNRC's new Interactive Healthy Eating Plan Calculator. The calculator is available on the web at http://www.kidsnutrition.org/HealthyEating_calculator.htm "By entering a child's sex, age, weight, height, and physical activity level, parents can obtain a general eating plan that provides all the nutrition and energy their child needs to grow and be active without excessive weight gains," said Joan Carter, an instructor in the department of pediatrics and CNRC dietitian who developed the calculator.

Study finds television does not lower test scores

Does television rot children's brains? A new study by two economists from the University of Chicago taps into a trove of data from the 1960's to argue that when it comes to academic test scores, parents can let children watch TV without fear of future harm. Article continues

Inside the brain - an interactive tour - Alzheimers

What happens in the brain of a person with Alzheimer’s disease? This tour explains how the brain works and how Alzheimer's affects it.Taking the tour: There are 16 interactive slides.

Researchers say citerion for child abuse not aways accurate

When it comes to looking for damage to the eyes to prove child abuse, new research shows that things aren't always as they seem, according to Patrick Lantz, M.D., a forensic pathologist from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. "Contrary to what many doctors have been taught, we found that number and location of hemorrhages of the eye's retina aren't always proof of child abuse," said Lantz, who reported the results today at the 58th annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Seattle. "Retinal hemorrhages occur more often than most doctors think are associated with a wide variety of conditions."   Article continues